The Children of Sanchez

by Oscar Lewis

  My father’s family lived in a small town in Veracruz and we knew almost nothing about them. When Roberto and I were very small, my papá’s papá sent for us. My grandpa was alone because my grandma and uncles had died, I don’t know exactly how. My grandpa had the biggest grocery store in Huachinango and many people in the village owed him money. He said the store was ours and my father finally sold it. But an uncle of mine, my grandfather’s half-brother, had my father put in jail to get the money away from him. I think they wanted to kill him or something but at night my mother sneaked out and went to the jail. It was only a country jail, and she hit the guard with a club. I’m not sure what she did but she got papá out of jail and we beat it as fast as we could, back to Mexico City. As a result, my father didn’t get a single penny out of my grandpa’s store.

  I was six years old when Consuelo was born. Roberto and I saw the midwife come in and there was a lot of movement going on but we didn’t understand anything then. We were put out of the room and then we heard a baby’s cry. I always liked to hear a baby crying and for me it was a very nice thing to have a sister. But she slept in the bed with my parents, and when my mother carried her around all the time, nursing her, and calling her “my pretty little daughter,” I began to have an ugly feeling. My mother noticed that I was jealous and said, “No, no, son, you know you are my favorite. Don’t believe anything else.” It was true, because when she went out selling she always, always, took me with her. We left Roberto with my grandma and I went with mamá. Knowing how much she loved me, I would ask for everything I saw and would go into a temper if she didn’t buy it. She used to say, “Ay, son, I love you very much but you are very demanding. I wonder what you will be like when you are big.”

  One day my mamá and I were going to the Granero bakery for cake crumbs. She was talking to her comadre, Consuelo’s godmother, when I noticed blood running down mamá’s leg. I asked her if she had cut herself and she looked down and saw the blood and said, “I guess I really did cut myself.” She went home to bed and sent for my father.

  Later, the same lady who had brought Consuelo arrived, and again we heard a baby cry. My brother and I must have looked like a pair of scared rabbits for my papá came out and told us not to be frightened, that the lady had brought us a new sister in her suitcase. When I saw Marta for the first time I thought she was very ugly. I said, “Ay, mamá, you should have better asked the lady for a whiter, prettier one.”

  My father was very, very happy when his daughters were born. He really would have preferred to have had only girls. He was always more affectionate to my sisters but I didn’t notice it so much then because while my mother was alive my papá still loved me. As for Roberto, I don’t remember exactly. My papá never did like very dark people and it was probably on account of Roberto’s dark skin that my father disliked him. But when we were little he was not so severe with us. He spoke to us with a different tone of voice. I guess the worst thing that happened to me and my brother was to grow up, because I was very happy until I was eight.

  It was at about that time that I became aware of sexual intercourse. It happened that my mamá was lighting the charcoal fire and had sent me next door to borrow the fan blower. I ran off to our neighbor’s house and went in without knocking. There was Pepita in bed with her husband, with her legs up and he with his pants down and everything. I felt embarrassed, I couldn’t tell exactly of what, but I felt that I had surprised them doing something bad. Pepita looked upset, they stopped moving but didn’t change their position. She said, “Yes, take it, it’s over there on the brazier.” Then I went home and it occurred to me to talk about it to my mother. Ay! what a spanking she gave me!

  After that, I wanted to experience it for myself and tried to get the girls of the vecindad to play “papá and mamá” with me. My mother had a girl to help her in the house, and I played that game with her, whenever we were alone. One day she went to the roof to hang up clothes and I followed her. “Come on,” I said, “let’s do it.” I tried to raise her dress and pull down her pants, and just as she was about to give in, I heard someone tapping at a window. Our house, at that time, faced a stocking factory, and when I turned around to see who was tapping, there were all the factory workers, men and women, at the windows, pointing at us and laughing. Someone shouted, “Cabrón muchacho, just look at the little bastard.” Did I leave that roof quickly!

  The first day my mother brought me to school I was frightened and burst out crying. When the teacher wasn’t looking, I ran right back home. Señorita Lupe, my first teacher, was strict and would throw the eraser at anyone who was out of order. Once she gave me such a blow with a ruler that it broke on my wrist.

  That year I met my friend Santiago. He was my guardian angel in school, and used to protect me. When bigger boys hit me, right away I’d tell Santiago, and he would go after them. But he wouldn’t help me against younger boys. He’d say, “Aren’t you ashamed to cry? If he’s smaller than you, beat him up!” Santiago taught me to defend myself, to swear and use dirty words, and he told me all about what you do to women.

  I stayed in that school until the fourth grade. It was there that I got my nickname, Chino, because of my slanty eyes. Roberto entered the first grade when I was in the third and from then on I got into lots of fights because of him. Poor kid! Even when he was little he had a hard time! He was always getting into trouble. At recess I would see them dragging him, crying, to the principal’s office to punish him for something, and I would get angry and interfere.

  My brother once came to my classroom crying and with his nose bleeding. He said, “Francisco, the Pig, hit me, for nothing at all.” Without a word I went to the Pig’s room and said to him, “Francisco, why did you hit my brother?”

  “Because I wanted to, and so what?”

  “Well, hit me,” I said, and he hit me. I went at him and gave him a very hard punch. He lunged at me with a knife and if I hadn’t ducked he would surely have cut my face.

  They sent for my father; unfortunately it was a Wednesday, his day off, and he was at home. That afternoon I was afraid to go into the house, and stood looking through a crack in the door to see what mood my father was in. But he didn’t hit me that time. He only told me to avoid fights as much as possible.

  One Mother’s Day, I came home singing a song we had been rehearsing in school. “Forgive me, dear Mother, because I can’t give you anything but love.” My father was at home and he seemed very proud and happy about something.

  “No, son, we can give her something else, because just look at what I bought.” I saw a little radio standing on the wardrobe.

  “How nice, papá,” I said. “Is it for mamá?”

  “Yes, son, it’s for mamá and for you, too.”

  That’s how my father spoke to me then. He had won on his lottery ticket and bought it with the prize money. Afterwards, I came to hate the radio because it caused arguments in the house. My father got angry with my mother for playing it so much. He said it would get out of order and, “Nobody pays for anything around here except me!” He wanted the radio on only when he was at home.

  After my mother’s death, my grandmother took care of us for a while. I loved her and, after my mother was gone, she was the only person who really, truly loved me. She was the only one I went to for advice, the only one who cried if I didn’t eat. Once she said, “Manuelito, you are very willful and you worry me. The day I die you will see that no one else will cry to make you eat.”

  My grandmother never hit us, though she sometimes pulled my hair or my ears if I refused to go with her on an errand. My mamá had hit us more, especially Roberto, who was very mischievous. Why, once, when my brother wouldn’t come out from under the bed when she called, my mother grabbed the iron and shoved it at him. It hit him right on the head and raised a big bump. Compared to my mother, my grandma was a symbol of tenderness.

  My father got along well with my grandma; that is, they never had differences. She taught us to respect him because he f
ed and supported us. She was always saying that we should appreciate having the kind of father we had, for there were few like him in the world. She gave us good advice about everything and taught us to respect the memory of our mother.

  Sometimes my aunt Guadalupe took care of us. One evening my papá sent us out to buy candy. I think he expected us to take long, but I came back prematurely and saw my father trying to put his arms around my aunt, by force, right? I believe he was making love to her, and I had surprised them. I don’t think I liked it, but, well, he was my father, no? and I didn’t judge him.

  Then my father began to hire women to take care of us. I don’t remember the first servant’s name; she smoked a lot and her teeth were all yellow. Once she was washing and I went and put my hands up under her dress. “No, be quiet, let me alone, go away, or you’ll see what you get, you bloody little bastard.” The old girl didn’t want me to, but I lifted her dress and saw her tail. Ay! she had a lot of hair and was ugly.

  We moved from the Street of the Painters to a vecindad on Cuba Street. Our room was small and dark and very dilapidated, and seemed like a poor place to live. That was where my father met Elena.

  I don’t remember the exact numbers of our doors, but let’s suppose we lived in Room No. 1, and Elena lived with her husband, in No. 2. All my papá did was to move her from No. 2 to No. 1, and she became his wife. Before that, I almost considered her a playmate. She was very young and pretty, and often asked me to read the comics to her because she couldn’t read. She was our friend, no? So we felt betrayed when she and my father fell in love. She came to our house as a servant, to cover up the affair, and ended up as our mistress!

  One night, her husband sent word that he wanted to see my father. Now, my father is a pretty small fellow, but he went. I saw him grab a knife and put it under his belt before he left. They locked themselves in and I was very worried. I told Roberto, “Let’s go up to the roof. If we see that fellow start something we’ll both jump him.” We were only kids but we were on the roof, watching. We couldn’t see them, though, because they had even closed the inside door. I was really scared. I thought maybe that fellow was going to kill my father. Then my papá came out and after that Elena stayed in our house.

  The people in the tenement were scandalized at what happened—Elena walking out of one room and into another one. And what guts my father had! But because of the scandal papá had to move and we went to live on Orlando Street.

  On the day we moved, my father came home early from work, at 1:00 P.M. on the dot, and since he always liked to have things done quickly, he said, “All right, take down the bed and roll up the mattress.”

  So we rolled it up and, to hide the spots and stains, he covered it with a bedspread. Then, right away my father wanted us to move the furniture and gather up all our pots and pans. Elena took them off the hooks and put them in the tubs, so she could carry them with her. We had lots of tubs to store water, because there has always been a problem of water shortage in the vecindades. We didn’t rent a cart; we carried the things ourselves. Papá paid a porter to carry the wardrobe, since our new house was over a block and a half away.

  It was a bigger, prettier vecindad, and for the first time we lived in a place with two rooms. It made me feel as if we were rich and I was very happy about it. Our rooms were on the third story and there was only a tiny railing on the landing that faced the courtyard, so my father had a real fence put up to keep us from falling.

  But my father wasn’t satisfied with our rooms on Orlando and we moved back to Cuba Street, where he knew two women who worked in the restaurant. One of them had a daughter, Julia, whom I was very fond of. It was my ambition to make Julia my “novia,” but her family was better off than we were and I felt sort of inferior. When I saw how nicely her house was furnished I decided I’d never ask her to be my girl friend.

  At first Elena tried to be nice to us. She had never had any children and was very affectionate with all of us. I don’t know why, but after we moved to Cuba Street she didn’t treat us so well. That’s when my father’s attitude toward us began to change. She would fight with Roberto at the slightest provocation and my father beat my poor little brother more than ever. The only time I had the impression that my father cared for Roberto was when a dog in this vecindad tore a piece of flesh from my brother’s arm. My father was very upset and turned pale; he got completely confused and didn’t know what to do—some neighbors had to help.

  But it is true that Roberto had always been very difficult, you might say, impossible. He was very stubborn and put up a fight about any little thing. Elena would say, “Wash the floor,” and Roberto would answer, “Why should we wash it? You’re the housewife.” And so there was a big argument and when my father came home Elena would pretend that she was crying. He would grab his belt and give it to both of us. He made us wash the floor and the dishes and Elena would sit on the bed and laugh to make us madder.

  We were once seated at the table, having supper—my stepmother, my sisters, Roberto, my father and I. I was about to take a gulp of coffee when I turned to look at my father. He was staring at me and Roberto and he said, as though he really hated us, “Just to see you bastards swallow gives me a pain, yes, just to see you swallow, you filthy sons-of-bitches.” We hadn’t done a thing, yet that’s the way he spoke to us. Since then I’ve never sat at the table with my father.

  Having lost our mother, we children should have been closer; we should have backed each other up. But we could never be like that because my father always stepped in between us boys and the girls. He stood in the way and wouldn’t let me do my duty as the older brother. If my mother had lived, things might have been different. She was a great believer in the tradition that minors should respect their elders. If she had lived, maybe my sisters would have respected Roberto and me and we wouldn’t have had to abuse our authority.

  Here in Mexico, the idea is that the oldest child should look after the younger ones, sort of keep them in line. But my father didn’t allow me to and I never felt as if I had sisters because I couldn’t correct them. He’d say, “Who are you, you son-of-a-bitch, who are you to hit them? I’m the only one around here who is working his ass off and none of you bastards has a right to put a hand on them.”

  My sisters, especially Consuelo, tried to create bad blood between us and my father. She knew just what to do to make him beat us and pull our ears. Since the beginning, my father never let us play with her, or let her run, because she was so puny and that’s why, well, I didn’t take her much into account. Consuelo was always a whiny kid, really, no one could whine like my sister. I’d give her a little slap, and she’d burst out bawling. When my father came home she’d begin to rub her eyes to make them red and he would say, “What’s the matter, child? What’s wrong, daughter?” Then she would blow up any little thing into something big. For a light slap, she’d sound off like an ambulance siren. “Look, papá, he hit me on the lung!” She always said that because she knew it was the part of the body that would worry my papá. He fussed a lot over her because she was so skinny, and, of course, he whacked us hard.

  “Skinny”—that’s what we called Consuelo—always put on a humble face for my father, like Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz at the Crucifixion. All suffering and resignation, but she had small, sharp nails inside, you know what I mean? She was always self-centered, that sister of mine, and man! did she make Roberto and me mad.

  I don’t know why my father was so harsh with us and so fond of the girls. He had one tone of voice for them and another for Roberto and me. It’s probably because he was brought up the old-fashioned way. He told us, on the two or three times he ever reminisced about his life, that my grandfather was very strict with him and used to beat him a lot. And that’s why he must have decided that for us to respect him he must be, first, a he-man, and then a father. We never talked back to him, we always respected him, in fact we worshiped him, so why did he treat us that way?

  My father beat us, not out of cru
elty, but for deeper reasons, because of his love for Elena. Naturally his wife meant more to him than his children and he beat us to make up to her, to please her. Deep down he loved us too, but he wanted us to amount to something and when he saw that we didn’t do the right thing he felt cheated, disappointed. He used to say that Elena was a saint and that we were riffraff, that we had evil hearts and never wanted to understand her or allow her to be happy. But, to my way of thinking, his love for Elena was a mixture of affection and gratitude, and my father is, well, very loyal. I don’t think he loved Elena as much as my mother, because my mother was his first love, a real, true love.

  When it came to my stepmother, I tried to keep my mouth shut, because I knew it wouldn’t turn out good for me. I always advised Roberto to keep quiet but he’d say there was no reason for him to shut up because that woman was not his mother. Elena treated my sisters better, because they were girls and were too small to resist her. But we boys were big enough to figure things out.

  Once, we were having a chat about family things, and I happened to tell Elena that my mother sometimes affectionately called my father “Old Tomcat.” Then Elena called my mother a dirty name. I really got mad. My mother had her own way of loving my father and giving him nicknames and Elena had no right to insult her. We had a big argument and when my father came home he beat me. But usually I kept quiet when she said something to hurt me. I was, well, careful, but Roberto was like a volcano; you just touched him and he exploded.